Hitchcock, Selznick's Battle of Wills

Timed for the centennial of Hitchcock's birth, "Hitchcock, Selznick & the End of Hollywood" (9 tonight on Channel 9) uses the two film giants as symbols of Hollywood in transition.

The story told through the two men is the decline of the all-powerful studios and producers and the ascent of the auteur director.

Hitchcock proves to be a neat fit. Selznick is messier. He seems an imperfect symbol for anything except his own profligacy.

Sometimes it's best to enjoy a program for its parts more than its whole. Film buffs -- most of us, I suppose -- should find satisfaction here and there in the 90-minute documentary as producer, writer and director Michael Epstein examines Hitchcock's and Selznick's intersecting careers.

Epstein's chronological boundaries are Selznick's "Gone With the Wind" triumph in 1939, and his failed effort to duplicate that success with the big, lurid Western "Duel in the Sun" in 1946.

Hitchcock had no connection with either film, but in the years between them he was uncomfortably under contract to Selznick.

The documentary, shown locally during this year's San Francisco Film Festival, is at its best laying out the source of the discomfort -- a struggle between two ill-fitting personalities, both control freaks.

Hitchcock was a man who memorized train schedules for fun, who had grown accustomed to being his own boss as the great hope of the English cinema in the 1930s, who didn't like being criticized and who was so meticulous that he mapped out his films frame by frame in advance.

Selznick was a megalomaniac who hired directors as underlings, peppered his employees with memos that were often brutal, kept irregular hours and lived so expansively that he was capable of losing $32,000 a night playing gin rummy. So the chances of a smooth partnership were slim when Selznick brought Hitchcock to the United States. Interestingly, there was talk that the first Selznick-produced, Hitchcock-directed movie would be about the Titanic. But that would have been too expensive. Instead, the first joint effort was "Rebecca," in 1940.

Selznick and Hitchcock clashed immediately over how faithfully "Rebecca" should adhere to Daphne du Maurier's novel. Later there would be disputes over "Spellbound" and, in the beginning, "Notorious."

Epstein makes no claim of foot-stomp ing or blustery nose-to-nose encounters. More commonly, it seems to have been Selznick pouring his irritation into lengthy memos, and Hitchcock shrinking in Selznick's presence while he rebelled in droll ways. One was to feign sleep while a movie was being shot, the point being that he wasn't in charge.

So it may be pure Hitchcock that in "Rear Window," filmed after Hitchcock was out from under Selznick's thumb, the killer played by Raymond Burr strongly resembled Selznick.

It could have been worse. At least he didn't equip a Selznick look-alike with a dress, wig and knife for "Psycho."

I'm sure they feel pumped at KRON (Channel 4) about the Columbia Journalism Review study ranking the station third in the nation for the quality of its news coverage.

KRON does a solid job. I like KRON. But it's a fool's errand to try to apply a statistical yardstick to the overall quality of TV news. Which, yes, makes fools of the people at CJR.

It's worth noting that Miami's WTVJ- TV, which finished just ahead of KRON in the quality scores, last year devoted 18 minutes of a 22-minute newscast, following the NBC miniseries "Merlin," to telling viewers how to find a reputable psychic.

One more slightly related note about local TV news. KTVU (Channel 2) -- whose newscast was omitted from the CJR study because it starts at 10 p.m. instead of the usual 11 p.m. -- just finished an enterprising and probing five-part series about homelessness in San Francisco.

You simply can't peruse the quality of TV news in the Bay Area and overlook KTVU. Yet that's exactly what the CJR study tried to do.